I posed the question about a month ago about why woodworking mags in general do not list is how long it take to build one of the projects. The answers I got said that the time involved was based upon skill level.
I can buy that up to a point, but there are a lot of jobs out there that go by ‘flat rate”. It would at least give us an idea.
Replies
I don't really think that is possible to give even an approximation of a time frame.
It doesn't only depend on the skill level but it also depends on how far into the details a project is carried.
Some people just go wham bam and it's done and some of us like to have everything just so.
C.
i agree it would be quite difficult to estimate the amount of time it would take to complete a lot of woodworking projects. an incredible number of things factor into it - i.e. experience, tools available, joinery choices, finishing etc.
as a rule, i try and avoid any tracking of time anway - had enough of that stuff when i was working. now, a project just takes as long as it takes! Rick in Cowichan Bay, B.C. - 50km north of Victoria, B.C.
My Website: http://www.rickswoodworking.ca
Norm can usually do most projects in 1/2 an hour, on the rare ocassion that the project is difficult it will take him 1 hour.
What else do you need to know!
Doug
If you're doing it for a living you learn pretty quick how to figure out how long projects take to build. If you don't, you don't stay in business very long. I've been woodworking for 35 years and by now I can size up in my head a project in a few minutes, time and materials. I know what tools and machines I have to work with and I know my skill level. It's an experience thing I guess.
Paul
There are so many variables
skill level is one
professional or hobbiest - related somewhat to skill level but time mgt, jigs, help and so on come in here to some extent
what tools are available to you - if you have a complete shop with all the tools you want, or starting out and have a minimal shop; are you using power tools, hand tools or a combination.
how much time you have to dedicate to the project at a time. If you stop, put away tools and then come back a few days later and have to get tools out, remember where you were ( other than no longer in the groove with the piece ) and then start up again. and if you are looking at 2-3 hrs every few days and that time includes getting things out and cleaning up when done, it will take longer than someone who can devote 8+ hrs a day every day to complete it.
Do you consider time to purchase materials as part of the project time? If you are not greatly organized, or money is tight, you may have to purchase materials in increments and work on it as you have the material.
The length of time it takes to complete a project is in direct relation to how many empty beer cans there are in the trash can.Terry
Santa Barbara,CA
http://home.pacbell.net/ebeniste/particle.htm
Check this out.
Hey chauncey ,
A flat rate manual certainly is used in the automotive business in fact the Chilton flat rate books is used by most shops to price jobs before they begin .
If the mechanic is fast he can beat the time by 1/3rd more or less and do another job and actually turn the $48 per hour into much more .
Since the art of woodworking is not an exact science ( kind of like medicine ) no time limits can be guaranteed .
Could you imagine asking the hospital or your doctor exactly how much the bill will be when they are done , good luck on that one .
I know you asked this same question a while back so I'm not really sure what it is you want to hear .
The magazines don't know how long things take , and even if the author says " this vanity cabinet or this coffee table took 23.5 hours to make , how will that correlate to you or me ??
When you go to the Dr. or the hospital for almost any procedure they make us sign a release form that states something like since the art of medicine is not an exact science no specified results can be guaranteed and you agree to hold us free from liability other then negligence (that does not include staff infection ) you are on your own .
Could you imagine what our clients would say if we had that clause written into our contracts ?
regards dusty
Guys,This is disengenuous. Yes, of course, skill, project detail, etc. all matter. But all of you, I bet, could size up a project and give some range of time it might typically be done in. It's a very useful thing to know for newbies. It gives you an idea of how efficient you are, it gives you an idea of whether you have the resources to complete a project. If you have any idea at all, it's genuinely helpful. Cooking has all the same kinds of issues and yet many cook books provide typical cooking times. I know that I can't cook as fast as they can but the relative range helps me figure out how much time I need and whether it's something I might want to try. The same could be done for other fields. Difficult, yes. Impossible, no.
Wrong perhaps, but surely not disingenuous.
Hi storme ,
"Many cooking books provide cooking times " , how about the preparation times like cutting up the ingredients and rolling out the noodles and such , how could a time be universal ?
O.K. so after many years, yes I can size up a job and estimate how many hours or days or weeks or months it will take me to complete . Mine is usually based on dollar volume , I know about how my prodution time produces X amount of dollars per day typically .
How will that help a beginner ? Will it tell them well , a pro can do that job in 24 hours . What if it takes a newbie 96 hours ? Will they be discouraged or feel like a failure ? Or will they say , whoa ! that magazine was way off .
Wouldn't it be great if we just worked on it until it was done right regardless of time ?
" Quality knows no time limit "
regards dusty
Well I don't expect your time and my time to be anything alike but it's still really useful information. First off, I know how much more efficient someone else can be which helps me figure out how, or if, I can do something faster. Secondly, the relative times are very helpful. If it takes a pro a week to build X and a day to build Y I have some idea of how much more involved X is than Y. re: upsetting someone, folks who gets discouraged if a pro is many times faster needs to figure a few things out, no sense protecting someone over something like that.anyway, I always appreciate the good advice I get from so many people on these forums and I don't mean to sound ungrateful. It's a frustration though, because when you are just starting out (I am, in landscaping) it's difficult to know what to charge and how long something will take once you really get it down. So time info and pricing info are always extremely helpful.
How long it takes. It takes me about three times as long as I think it will take.
I hear that!
Cooking - I am also a cook of sorts and so can answer that one.
Cook books, are written with the "average" houseperson cook in mind and will give you an estmated prep time, estimated time to bring the ingredients together and the cooking time. This all presupposes, that you have the ingredients readily available and do not have to constantly make trips, one item at a time, to the pantry or to the cellar to get items stored there. Knife skills and such are one of the big variables in this art and can slow you down. Other things that will change the equation ( and they will give differing times when involved ) are things like using a food processor or stand mixer as opposed to using a hand mixer or beating by hand. So something like making a cake ( decorating not included ) can have 3 differant times depending on how you are mixing. The actual time to get out the ingredients, measure them ( with a scale please) combine them and to bake the batter are all pretty much the same from person to person with negligible differrances. Baking time can be differant based on the oven and the altitude ( both of which have known compenstations and the base recipe is designed for sea level as a constant )
So even in cooking, they give "average" times based on "average" equipment done at sea level and you have to know how your equipment, circumstances and location will adjust all of these times.
I have a nice selection of tools, but nowhere near what would be needed for serious woodworking. If I have to cut curves, I have to use my jig saw ( a cheap $65 B&D ) and then sand carefully. I do not have even a cheap bandsaw. So what someone with a decent bandsaw can do in 1hr might take me 8.
1 - measure the board twice, 2 - cut it once, 3 - measure the space where it is supposed to go 4 - get a new board and go back to step 1
I just tell my customers 4-6 weeks. It allways takes 8 weeks though. Cant rush quality!!!!
LMC
As an aside. Your customers will be happier if you tell them it will take 10 weeks, and deliver in 8. Always underpromise and outperform.
My motto as well, wish I could meet it more often.
Tell them 10 weeks!! Ive tried that and it doesn't work here on the east coast. Alot of times the jobs are too interesting for me to lose and in the end the clients are very happy becouse of the quality. I also keep them involved in the decision making and let them stop in to take a look at anytime.
-Lou
My brother wrote this! Busting on me (he got on my site) Had to edit it! Jerk!
Edited 5/16/2006 6:37 am ET by loucarabasi
I agree with Chauncey. I think listing the time is very helpful and important (and I'll provide times on all future projects).
The value of est. completion time as I see it is less of estimating costs, and more of validating technique.
For example:
The craftsmen in Williamsburg estimate one hour per board foot for stock prepartion. I think that job should be done in less than 5 minutes from rough sawn stock. So what accounts for the difference? What are they doing that I am not? (I know all too well how visitors can slow you down, and that's another issue entirely.) I guess the point is if I told you you get one hour/bd ft, v. 5 min/bdft you'd approach the job differently- and probably do a different job. If you are writing a how-to article, isn't this an essential ingredient that helps the reader figure out what job to do?
Perhaps in a world of power tools, all processes are sufficiently standardized such that differences like the example above don't exist. I wouldn't know. But with hand tools where "best practices" aren't really established, time limits would provide important information. Agree?
Adam
Hi Adam,
How long did it take to build the 5-drawer dresser on your site? If you told me--and I don't expect you to--do you think that information would really be relevant to me? *AND* to the OP? *And* to the person down the street who tinkers at woodworking? *And...*
From your message, I think your answer is, yes. And, perhaps in the final analysis it would be relevant to a small percentage of woodworkers. I don't know.
But even though I had done this business for a while, my bids when trying to pare them down based soley on time were sometimes hit or miss. Why? Because there are too many variables even for a seasoned woodworker.
The only way I can see it being realistic is to have the authors keep a time log and state their actual times--what a burden that would be for both authors and editors. And then we would still be left with some sort of weighting system, personal or otherwise, to make it even partially relevant.
fwiw, I got to a very simple way of determining commission price in my later stage of woodworking. Basically I took the cost of materials and multiplied times ten. This broke down on small commissions--which I usually avoided. But from the 1.5k to 10k range it was nearly as accurate as the "real" methods of determining value.
Adam,
It's true that one can dress a board foot of lumber pretty quickly. I'd ask you to consider this, as a possible explanation for how average stock prep could creep up. Figured hardwood vs. clear softwood. Or taking 4/4 stock down to 1/2" or 5/8 instead of whatever it takes to clean one side, and flatten the other. And how about walking in the shop in the morning, and looking at the stock for a candlebox, vs a stack of stuff for the drawer sides, backs and bottoms for a highboy? I'd pace myself a little differently for those two jobs! (Not that I ever dress that much stock by hand.) Working to varying levels of accuracy also can account for differences in time to completion. Prepping stock for a Pilgrim era court cupboard would go faster than sizing the stuff for a Chippendale desk interior, for example.
An hour/bd ft does seem like a long time. I wonder if that might include shooting gluelines, making molding, and cutting dovetails? Could be argued that getting components ready for assembly is part of the time for stock preparation?
Technique vs estimating costs gets entertwined when you are trying to earn a living at it. That pressure is a pretty good incentive for improving one's technique, and is I guess, largely absent in museum shops where guys are there to demonstrate, not produce. All told, I'm amazed when reading the price books from the 18th century that tell us how quickly those guys could build the pieces they were turning out. They were incredibly fast.
Regards,
Ray Pine
Ray,I think you have made many good points and I have no answers except to say I think its worthwhile to consider all this stuff. And that means I agree with the OP. Some idea of completion times is helpful.Totally agree that account book data (and the philly price book) is a gold mine of woodworking info waiting to be discovered. A controversy is brewing over the PPB and the seemingly incomprehensible speeds it suggests. Adam
I believe it gets back to building style.
Any 5 of us can build the same cabinet design different ways each resulting in a different material cost and labor cost.
Neil
http://www.furnitology.com
Time,
Well for me, because I have to clean up the shavings and dust after every operation, takes me much longer than it should. I just work better when I have a clean shop. Maybe I should see a therapist? Oh, thats right, I use woodworking for my therapy, so what is time? Can I have a beer if I promise not to turn on the pwr tools, and only use hand tools?
Joe P
I haven't read all of the posts, but I heartily agree with the folks that suggest that it takes three times longer than we think. Another KEY, perhaps an East Coats thing, underpromise and outperform. GREAT advise! If I tell a client 6 - 8 weeks and I know that it will go ten, I have done no one any favors. To the client, it will seem as though I don't know what I'm doing and it hurts my creditability with any referrals or future projects. I never want to known as the guy that does great work, but...........................
Just my two cents. The way I figure a job is that I build it on paper, double it and add twenty percent. I've NEVER grossly overbid a project. I have underbid a number of times, but that's another story.
John
Hi John ,
Just out of curiosity , do you double the cost of materials and add 20% to get to the final price ?
regards dusty
Dear Dusty,
Well, actually, I was kidding about that little "formula". I've actually gotten to the point where I can estimate fairly accurately. What I used to do wasn't too far from that "formula", because I always estimated based upon what I thought that I "should" get done as opposed to what I "actually" can get done in an allotted time frame. I would forget little goodies like set up time, clean up time, thinking time, layout time, talking with the client time, all of that adds up. So, to answer your original question, no, I didn't double the materials, I was always pretty accurate with those. I do mark up materials, however, if I am purchasing the materials, I charge for the time to select, pick up and handle the materials. The cost of materials I typically mark up 15% to cover overhead & profit.John
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